Tales of Home [7]

Mrs Figg wrote: whats this Black Knight satellite? is it a hoax?

Not so much a hoax as group imagination stitched together from bits and pieces.  Look at wikipedia: the guy who first framed the idea later disavowed it.  Too late, the idea is out there.  Ignore it and it should go away.

{{{{{Beautiful early spring day today, blue skies and sunshine, but before that was sunrise, here it is at various stages between home and my work}}}}}











{{{Final shot taken out the window of my work}}}



{{{{{And one bonus pic, from yesterday, or possibly the day before Cool clouds }}}}

Thats the first thing that cheers me up is that theres more daylight now

I've got both daylight AND electricity again!

Thats the first thing that cheers me up is that theres more daylight now- Azriel

{{It is good to go to work in the light, it is nice to awake and for dawn to appearing- but I have found something to be crabbit about it all I am only just about catching dawn now, soon the sun will be up before I leave and I will miss lots of glorious sunrises And no, I cant bloody well just get up any earlier!!! }}}}}

I've got both daylight AND electricity again!- David

{{{ Hurrah for the Linesmen, and whoever brought the sun up this morning }}}}

Spring has finally sprung.

Beautiful! We've still got shades of grey here.

Oh that looks nice! You're a full month ahead of me.

Gorgeous! Quite jealous here in Maryland too.

We're still snowed under. (It's pretty warm though.)

Spring is about two weeks early here. its not normal. two years ago it mega snowed in March.

Weve had it lovely here also Its been sunny & warm since last week The daffs are out in battalions & the trees are slowly blossoming up Im looking forward to the tulips

My parents decided to get more chickens this year, after having passed on the opportunity last year, so we have four new chicks that we just got last week. They spend most of their time in the family room in a big plastic tub under a heat lamp so far, but they come out occasionally. When they're bigger and have actual feathers instead of just fluff they'll start to get to explore outside and eventually move down to the main henhouse with the other two we still have. They're still so tiny now though!

Don't you have to be zoned for livestock? Or do you just keep it small enough the neighbors don't mind?

I don't recall what the precise rules are but there's a thriving backyard chicken community in the county here and it seems that so long as you don't have a huge flock they're basically considered pets. I know goats are different though cause my stepmom had wanted one but it apparently isn't allowed.

There's been a strong lobby in the last 25 years or so get local ordinances that allow the keeping of a few chickens in residential areas. Now I just take it for granted in WA-OR-ID. The chicken ordinances differ from city to city, but I think there's a lot size requirement and you're usually restricted to 6 hens and NO roosters (roosters are vicious and really loud at inappropriate hours ). What brought it all to a head around here was a large number of immigrant families from Asia and Latin America who took raising chickens for granted to provide food for the family. Then the whole-foods movement joined the debate with their political knowledge in support of locally grown organic eggs. In the end, most cities recognized that it was easier to regulate than to ban.

yeah roosters are bloody annoying birds.

yeah roosters are bloody annoying birds.  people think they are cute country critters. NO! they are not cute at 5am when you want to sleep.

One of the first survival skills you learn as a farm kid is how to kick a rooster for maximum distance without getting pecked to death in the process. The trick is to land the kick low, just below the breast, like you were kicking a football for a field-goal.

We're gonna be clearing brush off one of our hang gliding launches in central Pennsylvania tomorrow, so I loaded up the car and headed out of the big city.

If you're ever wondering where all the fat people are at, just go to a Chinese buffet on Friday night in rural Pennsylvania. I spent dinner watching chinese waitresses slip around Pennsylvanian natives like kids dodging sumo wrestlers. I have to wonder why so many chinese ended up in the middle of nowhere and what the hell they think of it all. It seems more like they're doing an efficient job of feeding foreign cattle than really being a part of the town. Over the years eating there I've seen it go from 3/4 "Chinese" food to 1/4 "Chinese" food and the rest American. Thank god they keep the stir fried string beans. Someday I'll learn how to cook them.

But now I'm in my motel in the quaint little village of North Bend - an oasis of cell phone coverage about a 100 meters wide in the Pennsylvania Wilds. One of those places where you have to know that if the office is dark you go across the street to the local watering hole and ask around. Spent a half hour sharpening my two machetes over the bathtub, ready to clear some brush tomorrow. I would have been camping but it's just gonna be too doggone cold. I can take a cold night, or a cold morning, but I draw the line at facing both of them back to back.

Why can't most hotels figure out how to place lights so you can read in bed? Drives me crazy.

The quarter of my ancestry that is Pennsylvania Dutch won't stand for this aspersion-casting on Pennsyltucky.

{{{I spent a lot of time as a kid in rural PA at my grandfather's house, but he and the rest of the family up there are far enough south that the region is now being overtaken by the creeping Baltimore suburbs and has lost much of its old flavor.}}}

I have been to a Chinese restaurant similar to what you describe but it was in Baltimore County, MD. Didn't last very long either.

"Spent a half hour sharpening my two machetes over the bathtub"...................Halfy ,

That sounds an awful lot like a deleted scene from The Bates Motel, "Psycho" *gulp!*

for clearing out knotweed (invasive species) nothing is as fast as a machete if you don't have power tools.

halfwise wrote:for clearing out knotweed (invasive species) nothing is as fast as a sharp machete if you don't have power tools.

corrected

Very true. Nothing is more frustrating than a DULL machete if you don't have power tools.